Buy Black

Tre “OBEYERAFOO” Millyanz

I just heard a great idea for supporting Black businesses I thought I’d share with everyone. Get a few people from your organization, group of friends, church group, fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, etc. together once a month to visit a new Black business. People are always telling us to buy Black, but it’s hard to find Black businesses when you’re just looking for something you need immediately. You don’t say to yourself, “I need some milk, let me go find a Black owned grocery store right quick.” No, gas ain’t cheap and you don’t feel like driving all over the place looking for a Black-owned store. Instead, a group of people can share the work load finding Black businesses on the internet or just by asking around. Then when one of you find one you can all make plans to visit there together. Simple genius I tell you.

Let me go ahead and explain the concept of buying Black while I’m at it.  A lot of people just throw that term around, but most people don’t really understand why it’s important.  There are a few major things that drive economies, and they all have to do with movements of money.  These things are government spending, investment, savings, and consumption.  We (Black folk) are good at that last one….consumption.  But consumption is only important when it’s used to drive investment, savings, and taxes for the government (unfortunately our government is run by idiots so they don’t do live up to their economic responsibility most of the time).  Consumption is not so good for your community when it is used to fund other people’s investment and savings.  This is why buying American strengthens the American economy, and buying Japanese, for example, increases the American trade deficit.  This is why America has so much debt.  We consume too much ish from other places.  Meanwhile, Black people have made everyone else rich through our labor or our consumption, but we can’t fund our own damn schools to teach our kids about our people or provide jobs for our people, so they can get better jobs and live better lives than us.

If this is sounding too much like that econ class that you always hated, let me put it this way…money comes in the community and money goes out of the community.  The more money that comes in the more jobs there are, the more we can save, and the more we can invest in more businesses to create more jobs, more savings, and so on.  If we give our money to other people, there will be no money left for us and we’ll have to borrow money to keep up our lifestyles.  This is why many Black people are in more debt than the average American.  If we started saving and investing in our own community, we could build good schools, businesses, and institutions.  It is absolutely ridiculous for us to trust other people to teach us and govern us properly when they don’t really want to and we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.

So buy Black not because people say you should do it, or even because you want to help a sister or brother out.  Do it because it’s good for YOU and your family.

Thank you and goodnight.